The Creators Podcast

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891):Madame Blavatsky was the mother of modern mysticism who turned Victorian reason on its head. She claimed to speak for hidden Masters in Tibet, mixed Eastern philosophy with Western occultism, and wrote books that helped shape everyone from Gandhi to Yeats to Kandinsky. Her critics called her a fraud. Her followers called her a prophet. The truth is she was both, and neither. This episode is about what happens when imagination itself becomes rebellion. When invention becomes revelation. When a person outsmarts an empire with nothing but audacity, mystery, and smoke and mirrors.FOR MOREMadame Blavatsky the Mother of Modern Spirituality by Gary LachmanTheosophy on WikipediaTheosophy Collections at HarvardIf you're ready to create, I built The Creators Collective as a home for artists, writers, and tender rebels who believe in living wholeheartedly. Through poetry, story, and creative work of every kind, we dare to live out loud. For just $44 a month, you can join The Salon, our first tier, and get monthly live classes, full access to the creative archive, weekly sparks to keep your fire alive, and a community of fellow makers at the table with you. Or, you can take a deeper dive into The Inner Circle, giving you access to more engagement, behind-the-scenes insights, private interactive calls, and opportunities for direct mentorship. It’s the space where we move past inspiration and into true creative transformation. THE SALONTHE INNER CIRCLE

Louis Armstrong (1901-1971):Louis Armstrong was the sound of jazz itself. His horn was once considered too dangerous to be on the airwaves, too alive to be contained. But America has a way of sanding down what it fears. Armstrong became the smiling face of jazz, a Hollywood star, almost a Disney character. This episode isn’t about the legend we remember. It’s about the danger we forget. About how art born in defiance gets bleached into nostalgia. And what we may lose when we trade the unruly for the respectable.FOR MOREPioneer Or Popular Entertainer? BBCA Heart Full of Rhythm (Interview with Biographer)Louis Armstrong LIVEIf you're ready to create, I built The Creators Collective as a home for artists, writers, and tender rebels who believe in living wholeheartedly. Through poetry, story, and creative work of every kind, we dare to live out loud. For just $44 a month, you can join The Salon, our first tier, and get monthly live classes, full access to the creative archive, weekly sparks to keep your fire alive, and a community of fellow makers at the table with you. Or, you can take a deeper dive into The Inner Circle, giving you access to more engagement, behind-the-scenes insights, private interactive calls, and opportunities for direct mentorship. It’s the space where we move past inspiration and into true creative transformation. THE SALONTHE INNER CIRCLE

Rosie the RiveterRosie was the face of wartime feminism; the rolled sleeve and red bandana, the icon of “We Can Do It.” But Rosie the Riveter was a symbol, a myth, made by men, to serve the purpose of war. This episode isn’t about who Rosie was. It’s about who she wasn’t. It’s about the women who built battleships but couldn’t open bank accounts. About art used to recruit, not liberate. About creativity conscripted when it is conscripted by empire. And what happens when a symbol becomes more powerful than the truth it erased.FOR MOREThe True Story of Rosie the Riveter--History ChannelThe Girls Who Stepped Out of LineIf you're ready to create, I built The Creators Collective as a home for artists, writers, and tender rebels who believe in living wholeheartedly. Through poetry, story, and creative work of every kind, we dare to live out loud. For just $44 a month, you can join The Salon, our first tier, and get monthly live classes, full access to the creative archive, weekly sparks to keep your fire alive, and a community of fellow makers at the table with you. Or, you can take a deeper dive into The Inner Circle, giving you access to more engagement, behind-the-scenes insights, private interactive calls, and opportunities for direct mentorship. It’s the space where we move past inspiration and into true creative transformation. THE SALONTHE INNER CIRCLE

Mariya Yudina (1899–1970)Mariya Yudina was a radical classical pianist born into a Jewish family in Tsarist Russia who later converted to Orthodox Christianity under Stalin’s atheist regime. She was banned multiple times, living in poverty, and never silenced, she refused to separate her art from her convictions. Her story, and how she used art to as a form of reverence, and resistance, is powerful. Somehow, in the heart of tyranny, she made eternity, audible.FOR MOREPlaying With Fire--Biography Maria Yudian playing Mozart Piano Concerto No 20If you're ready to create, I built The Creators Collective as a home for artists, writers, and tender rebels who believe in living wholeheartedly. Through poetry, story, and creative work of every kind, we dare to live out loud. For just $44 a month, you can join The Salon, our first tier, and get monthly live classes, full access to the creative archive, weekly sparks to keep your fire alive, and a community of fellow makers at the table with you. Or, you can take a deeper dive into The Inner Circle, giving you access to more engagement, behind-the-scenes insights, private interactive calls, and opportunities for direct mentorship. It’s the space where we move past inspiration and into true creative transformation. THE SALONTHE INNER CIRCLE

John von Neumann (1903–1957)Born in Budapest to a banking family, von Neumann was a child prodigy who could divide eight-digit numbers in his head by age six. By his twenties, he was helping formalize quantum mechanics. He immigrated to America in the 1930s, helped design the atomic bomb in the 1940s, and in the 1950s, quietly built the blueprint for every computer in the world. He laid the foundations of game theory, AI, and self-replicating machines. He called what was coming “a singularity," a point when machines would evolve past us. In his final days, ravaged by cancer, he began to fear what he had built. Was he a genius ahead of his times, or was he something more, something leading us in an ominous direction that he felt was inevitable? FOR MOREThe Life of John von Neumann -- Britannica The Maniac by Benjamin LabatutJohn von Neumann and the art of being thereIf you're ready to create, I built The Creators Collective as a home for artists, writers, and tender rebels who believe in living wholeheartedly. Through poetry, story, and creative work of every kind, we dare to live out loud. For just $44 a month, you can join The Salon, our first tier, and get monthly live classes, full access to the creative archive, weekly sparks to keep your fire alive, and a community of fellow makers at the table with you. Or, you can take a deeper dive into The Inner Circle, giving you access to more engagement, behind-the-scenes insights, private interactive calls, and opportunities for direct mentorship. It’s the space where we move past inspiration and into true creative transformation. THE SALONTHE INNER CIRCLENext LIVE CLASS is Radiohead: Paranoid Android talking about creating human art in an inhuman world.

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Born in Crete under a strict, war-shadowed household, Kazantzakis spent his life chasing the unanswerable. He studied law in Athens, philosophy in Paris, wandered across Europe and Asia, and wrote like his soul was on fire. During the Nazi occupation, he hid in mountain caves and wrote Zorba The Greek as his joyful resistance. His later books, such as The Last Temptation of Christ, were banned, burned, and condemned by the Church. He didn’t flinch. He called himself a “comrade of struggle.” Kazantzakis wrote to stay free, to dare to ask the questions, and to live with joy in the face of despair. To wrestle the divine on the page.FOR MORENikos Kazantzakis Collection on GoodreadsDocumentary Nikos KazantzakisThe Temptations of Writing (A Review)If you're ready to create, I built The Creators Collective as a home for artists, writers, and tender rebels who believe in living whole heartedly. Through poetry, fiction, story, and creative works of all kind, we dare to live out loud.Next LIVE CLASS: Leonard Cohen/The Fires of Devotion

Adrianne Lenker (born July 9, 1991) is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Raised in a Minnesota Christian cult and trained in classical guitar before she was old enough to vote, she writes songs like they’re secret doorways—tender, precise, and cracked wide open. As frontwoman of Big Thief and in her solo work, Lenker makes music that feels like eavesdropping on a prayer. Lenker’s music is a resistance to the status quo of corporate sponsorship and proprietary performance. She sings like she’s trying to remember something she once promised herself she'd never forget. Her songs are lullabies for the undone—filled with pine needles, late light, open wounds, and grace.For More:Songs (2020) – spare, intimate, recorded in a one-room cabinBright Future (2024) – her newest solo album, a luminous study in light and griefBig Thief – a body of work that’s wild, elemental, and impossible to fakeIf you're ready to create like every note matters—and live like the truth has teeth—The Creators Collective is a home for artists, writers, and tender rebels who believe in the sacred act of making. Through song, story, and shared silence, we remember what the soul sounds like.Find out more here.

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (January 28, 1873 – August 3, 1954) was a French writer, actress, journalist, and sensual force of nature. She wrote with feline precision—every sentence clawed its way toward the body. Toward touch. Toward truth.By the time of her state funeral (the first ever for a French woman of letters), she had already carved her name into French literature. Her work—ranging from the scandalous Claudine series to the tender, brutal Gigi—charted the terrains of female pleasure, aging, solitude, and survival.For More:The Vagabond – a novel of reinvention and romantic resistanceBreak of Day – her lush meditation on aging, memory, and the bodyEarthly Paradise – selected writings and reflectionsIf you're ready to create like it's seduction—and live like art is your native language—The Gate of Fire is a 3-month creative initiation for artists, writers, and soul-makers ready to reclaim their voice, now open for enrollment. Live rituals, small-group intensives, and one-on-one mentorship with Rainier Wylde.The fire is open. Are you coming?Find out more here.

Frank Stanford (August 1, 1948 – June 3, 1978) was an American poet. raised in the muddy backroads of Arkansas, he wrote poems that bleed childhood, violence, love, and death into a single long breath. At twenty-nine, he shot himself three times in the chest. By then he had already built a cult following—drifting through levee camps, graveyards, and cotton fields, gathering the broken dreams of the South into his work.Frank Stanford didn’t write for the academy. He wrote for the haunted. For the kids with dirt on their knees and fire in their belly. For anyone who’s ever loved something wild and known it couldn’t stay.For More:What About This: Collected PoemsWhere There's a Will: An Essay and Review of Stanford's WorkIf you're ready to create like it's survival—and live like it's a poem—The Creators Collective is a sacred culture for writers, artists, rebels, and ritual-makers who refuse to create alone. Through live classes, ancestral rites, creative prompts, and a private circle of mirrors, we turn raw voice into living art. Find out more here

Nazım Hikmet (1902–1963):Born into Ottoman nobility, Nazım Hikmet traded comfort for his convictions. He was a fiery poet and spokesperson for the people. Nazim wrote verses that made governments nervous because they dared to dream of freedom, love, and the dignity of the working class. Imprisoned for his politics, exiled for his words, he spent much of his life behind bars or far from home, smuggling his poems out of prison. For More:Poems of Nazım HikmetHuman Landscapes from My CountryWant to go beyond listening about creators and start to take your own creative heart more seriously? The Creators Collective is a place to stop scrolling and start showing up—for your voice, your work, your creative self. This group is filled with resources and live teachings from Rainier. Create yourself alive.Sign up here.